USA trip - San Francisco #3

Day 2 of our hop-on-hop-off bus pass.

In the morning, I decided to go off by myself to explore the Presidio area.
I got off the hop-on-hop-off bus at the Palace of Fine Arts which is seems oddly placed in the area. It is an outdoor Romanesque columned outdoor area with a pretty lake.

I walked a little way through the Presidio area towards Cressy Field. George Lucas owned an area of land here until recently when it was all sold to Disney. Lucasfilm offices are located here. There isn't much to do but I wanted to see the Yoda fountain. You can't go into the offices but you can have a look at all the memorabilia from the movies that is all around the lobby of the building.

Also in the Presidio area is the Walt Disney family museum. This is managed by the family and contains exhibitions about the life of Walt Disney. You can buy exclusive pins and memorabilia not found in places like Disneyland. I didn't go into the museum because of time constraint.

Met up with Marika after lunch and we hopped on the Golden Gate park loop of the bus tours.
Incidentally, our guide told us that here everything is called "Golden Gate" something. If you are meeting somebody, you need to be specific - e.g. Golden Gate bridge, Golden Gate park (they are at opposite ends of San Francisco).
The park is man made and is very large. Because the park is not natural but man made, they imported trees that would survive in the San Francisco climate. Wondering through the park, you can smell the eucalyptus from the tall trees that are one of the two most popular trees in the park. It felt like being in Australia... However, these trees do not have those dangerous grey drop bears in them....

We did a driving loop through the park but because it was late in the afternoon, we didn't have time to get off the bus to have a look at any of the attractions. I took some photos of some of them. I would have liked to see the Conservatory of Flowers and the Japanese Tea Gardens.

Conservatory of Flowers

The road at the eastern end of the park exits towards the beach. There are two windmills which seem a little oddly placed but are kinda cool.

Windmill

Inside the park there is also a science museum. Apparently it's also good but we didn't have the time to visit.

The bus made a loop outside the park and we ended up at nearly sunset at Land's End where there was a lookout over cliffs of the Californian coast.

 After the bus tour, we headed back to the city. There are a lot of shops around Union Square heading towards Powell. We decided to grab more cheesecake from the Cheesecake factory and then do some shopping.